Before I get too far into the events of the day the farm got more dangerous it's about time I introduced some of the characters we have been sharing this experience with over the season. Adam, the main character in this story, is soon to be 27. He comes in on Monday and Tuesday to give us a hand. He worked for the farm last season, so he has insight into the details of cultivating our specific piece of land. On top of that he has an amazing sense of humor and great taste in music. I learned recently that Adam is very stoic and can take a joke, even when the situation doesn't warrant laughter.
The day started off pretty typically. Marisa and Melody (our farm manager and friend) were a little more tired than usual. The clouds hung a little thicker than we're used to, but other than that, a normal morning. We all met in the barn at 7am and divided the harvest duties needed to fill our CSA bags, due to be dropped off that afternoon. Marisa, Adam and I teamed up to harvest the summer squash. It's a task that can take three hours singlehandedly, so it's nice to have the company. Adam and I were working down the same block, lifting runners and peeking under enormous, spiky leaves. We were tediously clipping and collecting every baby patty pan, gentry, magda and yellow zucchini we could find. We were almost an hour into our day, discussing Adam's experiences at previous Gwar concerts and complaining about the endlessness of squash season, when minor tragedy struck!
I saw Adam leap back in a very animated manner. I didn't think anything of it at first glance. I have worked alongside Adam for quite a few harvests and the guy could be the poster child for making unnecessary contact with bull nettle (see our previous post). Originally he had the same perception of the event that I had. I'd like to say that I heard the rattle over his cursing, but I didn't. Adam was about 6ft away from me when we realized that he had just been bit by a rattlesnake! Initially the situation was a little surreal, mostly because Adam wasn't reacting in any way I would have thought. He was still very much alive and wasn't foaming at the mouth even a little bit. I am admittedly no snake bite expert, but I expected more. I sprinted to the barn to grab a bag of ice to hopefully slow the venom. I heard this trick from Crazy Rick down in Costa Rica. He is the only other person I know to have been struck by a deadly snake. I blazed past Melody as I attempted to calmly ask her to google rattlesnake bite on her iPhone. Her reaction to the situation was a little more drastic, as it should have been.
I placed the 15 pound bag of ice on Adam's shin, who was now sitting next to Marisa's and my former residence, an airstream trailer on the edge of the squash row. He was lying down and had on an icepack. Other than sucking venom out of the top of his foot, my snakebite knowledge was exhausted. Adam was very determined to not have any mouth against his dirty foot. He was also very set on not going to the emergency room. This was a problem because Melody had dialed 911 to get a game plan. Instead of a game plan, the operator ordered an ambulance and the only free advice we got was "Get help immediately and stay away from the animal". He didn't want help at all, initially stating that his foot didn't hurt very badly and he wasn't sure the venom even got in. I can't blame him. I hate doctors too, or at least doctor bills. Melody called off the ambulance. Adam now stated that it felt like an anvil got dropped on his foot. Not a good sign. So a compromise was made after some cell phone research confirming that no cheap clinic has anti-venom and without it the effects of the venom will spread up his body as soon as he starts moving again. Melody borrowed our Subaru and shuttled Adam down the road to San Marcos, 20 minutes away.
I jumped at the opportunity to use my McLeod, a tool that looks like a massive hoe on one side and a thick metal rake on the other. Marisa got it for me for my birthday to satisfy my nostalgia of working on trail crew, the only job these things are used for besides fighting wildfires and now...REVENGE. I am firmly against hunting a predator. I feel that it goes against the food chain and the natural order of things to use technology to take the life of something that would otherwise murder me. I, however, have realized two exceptions to my rule: 1. protecting my friends and family and 2. revenge. Like Dwight Schrute says, "Sometimes a farmer has to do what city folk can't." I am a farmer and as much as I wanted to hold up the headless body of that snake so that we could all gather squash with a sense of comfort, I didn't find it. I went back to the barn simultaneously relieved and deflated when I ran into Amilcar. Amilcar is from Guatemala and he doesn't speak much English, or he likes to watch me struggle with my Spanish. I told him what was going down in Spanglish mixed with a lot of sound effects and graphic hand gestures. Over the last 5 months my Espanol has gone from infant to caveman; a milestone, but when I really need to use Spanish, I have trouble pulling it off. Thankfully, I have patient teachers. Imelda, his wife, works in the fields with us, so he took the situation very seriously. He asked me where the snake was and my Spanish wasn't good enough to do anything other than walk the 1/4 mile to the spot and say, "Aqui."
I grabbed my trusty McLeod and Amilcar, being the superhero he is, grabbed a small 2ft stake labeling the ayote (that's Spanish for squash, most of our farm signage is bilingual). We patrolled the block of squash, all 5 rows of it, and the tomatoes and eggplant next door as well. Very carefully we grazed our weapons against the weeds and crops in attempts to flush the snake out. Hunting the hunter. Our dialogue was mostly "mira, mira, ayote, serpiente, serpiente." At one point I tried to use some Spanish vocab on Amilcar. I said "El serpiente es peligroso." Meaning, "The snake is dangerous." However, I accidentally inserted a question mark. "The snake is dangerous?" Amilcar looked at me very concerned as if to say, "What is this gringo doing? Adam is hospitalized, we have been searching for this creature for 45 minutes and he doesn't know it's dangerous?" I realized my mistake, but didn't have the vocabulary to take it back.
While Amilcar and I were calling it quits on the serpent crusade, Melody was catching up on 'The View' and the happenings of last January, according to Time magazine, in the waiting room. The nurses were monitoring the swelling by tracing the creeping bulge coming up Adam's ankle with a sharpie every 30 minutes. They had to make sure that the bag of anti-venom that he was receiving intravenously through an IV was sufficient. Anti-venom is very expensive and dangerous if one receives too much. From my understanding, Adam also received some lectures from the staff at San Marcos Hospital for farming in flip-flops. The lessons I have learned from all this: 1. Rattlesnake bites are a serious deal and no matter how tough you are you should never attempt to walk it off. 2. Ice slows down the venom flow in your blood, however, unless you plan to sit on your butt with a bag of ice on your leg for 3 weeks, you should probably just go to the ER. 3. Don't ever cut into someones leg to suck the venom out. It's gross and doesn't actually work. Never has. 4. Getting bit by a poisonous snake is painful and very expensive and although it's a cool story, it's probably cheaper and easier to go to Thailand for a month.
Adam came back at 2:30 in the afternoon, 6 hours after he had left for the hospital. He was in good spirits when I last talked to him although he did say that it hurt to walk and putting on a shoe was excruciating. When I asked Adam if he was going to wear shoes from now on, he just shook his head sadly and said, "No...I don't think so, it's just too hot."
The day started off pretty typically. Marisa and Melody (our farm manager and friend) were a little more tired than usual. The clouds hung a little thicker than we're used to, but other than that, a normal morning. We all met in the barn at 7am and divided the harvest duties needed to fill our CSA bags, due to be dropped off that afternoon. Marisa, Adam and I teamed up to harvest the summer squash. It's a task that can take three hours singlehandedly, so it's nice to have the company. Adam and I were working down the same block, lifting runners and peeking under enormous, spiky leaves. We were tediously clipping and collecting every baby patty pan, gentry, magda and yellow zucchini we could find. We were almost an hour into our day, discussing Adam's experiences at previous Gwar concerts and complaining about the endlessness of squash season, when minor tragedy struck!
I saw Adam leap back in a very animated manner. I didn't think anything of it at first glance. I have worked alongside Adam for quite a few harvests and the guy could be the poster child for making unnecessary contact with bull nettle (see our previous post). Originally he had the same perception of the event that I had. I'd like to say that I heard the rattle over his cursing, but I didn't. Adam was about 6ft away from me when we realized that he had just been bit by a rattlesnake! Initially the situation was a little surreal, mostly because Adam wasn't reacting in any way I would have thought. He was still very much alive and wasn't foaming at the mouth even a little bit. I am admittedly no snake bite expert, but I expected more. I sprinted to the barn to grab a bag of ice to hopefully slow the venom. I heard this trick from Crazy Rick down in Costa Rica. He is the only other person I know to have been struck by a deadly snake. I blazed past Melody as I attempted to calmly ask her to google rattlesnake bite on her iPhone. Her reaction to the situation was a little more drastic, as it should have been.
I placed the 15 pound bag of ice on Adam's shin, who was now sitting next to Marisa's and my former residence, an airstream trailer on the edge of the squash row. He was lying down and had on an icepack. Other than sucking venom out of the top of his foot, my snakebite knowledge was exhausted. Adam was very determined to not have any mouth against his dirty foot. He was also very set on not going to the emergency room. This was a problem because Melody had dialed 911 to get a game plan. Instead of a game plan, the operator ordered an ambulance and the only free advice we got was "Get help immediately and stay away from the animal". He didn't want help at all, initially stating that his foot didn't hurt very badly and he wasn't sure the venom even got in. I can't blame him. I hate doctors too, or at least doctor bills. Melody called off the ambulance. Adam now stated that it felt like an anvil got dropped on his foot. Not a good sign. So a compromise was made after some cell phone research confirming that no cheap clinic has anti-venom and without it the effects of the venom will spread up his body as soon as he starts moving again. Melody borrowed our Subaru and shuttled Adam down the road to San Marcos, 20 minutes away.
I jumped at the opportunity to use my McLeod, a tool that looks like a massive hoe on one side and a thick metal rake on the other. Marisa got it for me for my birthday to satisfy my nostalgia of working on trail crew, the only job these things are used for besides fighting wildfires and now...REVENGE. I am firmly against hunting a predator. I feel that it goes against the food chain and the natural order of things to use technology to take the life of something that would otherwise murder me. I, however, have realized two exceptions to my rule: 1. protecting my friends and family and 2. revenge. Like Dwight Schrute says, "Sometimes a farmer has to do what city folk can't." I am a farmer and as much as I wanted to hold up the headless body of that snake so that we could all gather squash with a sense of comfort, I didn't find it. I went back to the barn simultaneously relieved and deflated when I ran into Amilcar. Amilcar is from Guatemala and he doesn't speak much English, or he likes to watch me struggle with my Spanish. I told him what was going down in Spanglish mixed with a lot of sound effects and graphic hand gestures. Over the last 5 months my Espanol has gone from infant to caveman; a milestone, but when I really need to use Spanish, I have trouble pulling it off. Thankfully, I have patient teachers. Imelda, his wife, works in the fields with us, so he took the situation very seriously. He asked me where the snake was and my Spanish wasn't good enough to do anything other than walk the 1/4 mile to the spot and say, "Aqui."
I grabbed my trusty McLeod and Amilcar, being the superhero he is, grabbed a small 2ft stake labeling the ayote (that's Spanish for squash, most of our farm signage is bilingual). We patrolled the block of squash, all 5 rows of it, and the tomatoes and eggplant next door as well. Very carefully we grazed our weapons against the weeds and crops in attempts to flush the snake out. Hunting the hunter. Our dialogue was mostly "mira, mira, ayote, serpiente, serpiente." At one point I tried to use some Spanish vocab on Amilcar. I said "El serpiente es peligroso." Meaning, "The snake is dangerous." However, I accidentally inserted a question mark. "The snake is dangerous?" Amilcar looked at me very concerned as if to say, "What is this gringo doing? Adam is hospitalized, we have been searching for this creature for 45 minutes and he doesn't know it's dangerous?" I realized my mistake, but didn't have the vocabulary to take it back.
While Amilcar and I were calling it quits on the serpent crusade, Melody was catching up on 'The View' and the happenings of last January, according to Time magazine, in the waiting room. The nurses were monitoring the swelling by tracing the creeping bulge coming up Adam's ankle with a sharpie every 30 minutes. They had to make sure that the bag of anti-venom that he was receiving intravenously through an IV was sufficient. Anti-venom is very expensive and dangerous if one receives too much. From my understanding, Adam also received some lectures from the staff at San Marcos Hospital for farming in flip-flops. The lessons I have learned from all this: 1. Rattlesnake bites are a serious deal and no matter how tough you are you should never attempt to walk it off. 2. Ice slows down the venom flow in your blood, however, unless you plan to sit on your butt with a bag of ice on your leg for 3 weeks, you should probably just go to the ER. 3. Don't ever cut into someones leg to suck the venom out. It's gross and doesn't actually work. Never has. 4. Getting bit by a poisonous snake is painful and very expensive and although it's a cool story, it's probably cheaper and easier to go to Thailand for a month.
Adam came back at 2:30 in the afternoon, 6 hours after he had left for the hospital. He was in good spirits when I last talked to him although he did say that it hurt to walk and putting on a shoe was excruciating. When I asked Adam if he was going to wear shoes from now on, he just shook his head sadly and said, "No...I don't think so, it's just too hot."
Hi Marisa and Mark - oh my god - what an amazing story! I hope Adam is all recovered now!
ReplyDeleteHe is doing much better, but he says it still hurts to put his shoe on. he's jumping back on the horse and coming to work tomorrow morning.
ReplyDelete